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feels it has been violated, suppose it can die with a curse. Of course , the
Devil loves to be around and pick up those who die with a curse . Malcolm
Muggeridge once had Sister Theresa of Calcutta on a television show with
him. Muggeridge, who is by any measure a devoutly religious man , had just
written a book about Sister Theresa and obviously revered her. He told me
what she used to do in Calcutta. Her order of nuns would take people who
were dying on the street and move them into her convent where they'd die
anyway a few days later-they didn 't begin to have medicine to take care of
them or anything like that-but her notion was, and Muggeridge was
moved by this , and I agree that it is a moving idea, was that she didn ' t want
them to die with absolutely nothing . She wanted them to be able to come
in and get a little attention before they died so they wouldn't go out with a
complete bitterness in their hearts . Now that is a religious woman . The
recognition that one not die with a curse is fundamental to any inquiry into
what could be the possible nature of God and the Devil. If God is
embattled, and can't give fair justice to all, then what of those who do not
achieve what they saw as their own fulfillment and thereby become spiritual
material for the Devil , if not in this life then in another? We haven ' t said
one word about karma , but my first idea these days is that any attempt to
speak of these things makes no sense unless you take into account the
peculiar calculus of karma. We may have to recognize that we're not only
acting for this life but for other lives . Our past lives and our future lives .
Paying dues , receiving awards. Reducing the cost of future dues , for
example, by certain acts of abnegation that make no sense to us or our
friends, yet ready to dare , on the other hand , sometimes desperate activities
because we
are
desperate . The condition in which we live is hurting our
karma .
Int:
Karma is a word you've used increasingly in the last few years. It 's a term
that you did not use in "The Metaphysics of the Belly" or "The Political
Economy of Time ," but which you could have in describing the nature of
the soul. Is this something new in your metaphysics or is it a term for
something that you've already described, like the way in which the soul
exists, in "The Political Economy of Time"?
Mazier:
I had come across the word in books but never paid any attention. In
about 1953, I think it was in Rockford , Illinois , I went out to visit Jim Jones
in his colony and he was talking about karma and I said, "What's all that ?"
So he gave me the standard explanation which is that we are not only
reincarnated, but the way in which we are is the reflection, the judgment,
the truth , of how we lived our previous life . If you exist in a simple form of
karma with no interference by Gods or Devils , a natural flux of karma , then
to the degree you lived a life that was artful, your reincarnation was artful.
